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Vanishing Verbs Vocabulary Exercise 1 - Fill in the Blanks Read the excerpts from The Vanishing Verb and choose the most appropriate vocabulary word from the box for each excerpt. staccato / shoehorn / workhorse / yakking / episodic / moonlights / elliptical / bard / tickertape few and far between 1. TERENCE SMITH: "Today in Washington, around the country, television reporters, talking like this … Short, ___________________ bursts." 2. TERENCE SMITH: "Shepard Smith, the anchor of the fast-paced Fox report on the Fox News Channel, is known for his _____________________ delivery." 3. TOM PHILLIPS: "You hear a lot of sentences that aren't really sentences. You hear a lot of words dropped. You hear a lot of ... _____________________ speech with 'dot-dot-dots' where the connective tissue used to be." 4. TERENCE SMITH: "Time, of course, is the ultimate tyrant in television news, and Shepard Smith argues that shedding verbs, the ___________________ of traditional sentence structure, permits him to ____________________ more news into less time." 5. SHEPARD SMITH: "We don't speak in sentences with periods and dashes and colons and commas. That's not how we talk. So I try to talk like I speak when I'm ___________________ with my buddies." 6. TERENCE SMITH: "And script doctor Tom Phillips, who ___________________ as a Shakespearean actor, says that ___________________ English is nothing new." 7. TERENCE SMITH: "Call it 'TV speak,' or the case of the vanishing verb. Whatever, it's an abbreviated language unique to time-pressed television correspondents …Verbs are ___________________________ as she continues." 8. TERENCE SMITH: "But Tom Phillips argues that the best guide to television writing was provided not by the ________________, but by Albert Einstein." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons_plans/vanishing-verbs/ Vocabulary Exercise 2 - Matching Match the following words/expressions with definitions below. 1. staccato _____ 2. tickertape _____ 3. episodic _____ 4. workhorse _____ 5. to shoehorn _____ 6. to yak _____ 7. few and far between _____ 8. to moonlight _____ 9. elliptical _____ 10. bard _____ Definitions A. abrupt breaks between successive notes B. rare; not many and scattered C. to squeeze into a narrow space D. a horse used for heavy labor; the most dependable or durable worker E. paper tape used for recording telegraphed stock market quotations F. to chatter or talk about unimportant things G. to work at an additional job after one's regular one H. divided into segments or scenes I. an exalted national poet J. word(s) omitted; incomplete constructions Vocabulary Exercise 3 - Write your own sentences Write your own sentences using the vocabulary words/expressions. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons_plans/vanishing-verbs/ .

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